


Like Nobles Do

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Blossom in my Hands [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bath Sex, Body Image, Bubble Bath, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Luxury, Mentioned Dorian Pavus, Mentioned Viviennne, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 02:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13157106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: Naali Adaar has always been drawn to sweet, cute, feminine things, like frilly dresses and flowery-scented bubble baths, and greatly ashamed of her interest at the same time, because the humans around her told that such pleasures are meant for dainty, pretty women, not a lumbering Qunari with scars all over her body, palms worn into a coarse crust by pulling the string of her bow, stretch marks on her huge thighs, and skin the colour of ash. Now, however, she can finally indulge in feeling good about herself - with Blackwall's help.





	Like Nobles Do

Heating up a polished, flaring bath - large enough to accommodate both you and your lover, and with those fancy furniture legs shaped into clawed beast paws that poke out from under curling ferns, or vine leaves, or what have you. Filling it to the brim, so that the porous, iridescent mountain of bubbles rises high like a snowy peak... And then clambering in, sinking into the foam's warm embrace, and churning it up some more, cloaking yourself in its sparkling, popping blanket - before you finally settle, melting off into drowsy comfort, your lover by your side, as two glasses of wine waiting for each of you to take a sip (in preparation for going from tasting the wine to tasting each other), on a tiny, bandy-legged, gilded mahogany table, which casts a curious stretched-out shadow in the light of the little round scented candles, white and pink and honey-yellow, that have been lined up along the walls.  
  
This is an evening pastime fit for some prissy, pampered Orlesian - and for someone fond of mingling with their kind. Like Thom Rainier was, young and cocky and enraptured by the musical jingle and vivid glow of golden coins, so soothingly cool and heavy when they were passed into his hand; and by the murmur of voices, lapping around him like waves rolling over a gravel shore, filled with a deceptive silken softness, lauding him for empty, purposeless shows of strength; and by the hypnotic sway of embroidered gowns, swarming round him over a polished ballroom floor, little hands fluttering over his forearm to feel the muscle, pearly teeth flashing in a sly smile... Just a fleeting glint in the space between a slightly elongated, vulpine metal mask and the rim of a jewelled fan. A promise of a 'private little night' somewhere in the secluded chambers beyond that maze of ornate doors, where a bath stood full and ready, and a purple-decked four-poster bed was positioned just the perfect distance from it - precisely as many steps away as it would take for him to carry a dainty mademoiselle, naked save for the obligatory mask, now clouded with vapour, her skin smooth and slippery and smelling of something sugary and heady, before the mounting growl at the back of his throat got too much to contain, and he had to lay her down and wrap himself round her, supporting her head with his fingers over a hot, throbbing pulse point on her neck while he slipped inside her, not particularly caring that he still had not properly seen her eyes.  
  
He never thought he would get to experience any part of that life again. Or wished for such experience. Any and every reminder of the man he once was, of the man he fears still lives on in him - greedy, conceited, gluttonous, cowardly - is like a thorn that slips through a crack in his stolen armour and gets lodged in his chest, left there to fester, so that the flesh of his heart turns raw and inflamed, responding to the slightest poke with a surge of feverish pain.  
  
Such pokes abound in his conversations with Dorian and Vivienne (the latter, especially; at least the preening Tevinter had the decency to extend his hand in a truce). The mere sight of a haughty noble, all swathed in silk and velvet, with an imaginary coil of golden thread ready to measure people's worth with, is enough to disturb that oozing, rotting wound. And the same goes for those judgemental loiterers' typical little hobbies. Like wasting gold on lavish feasts and balls that are really just traps upon traps, haphazardly concealed under a thin layer of glitter and gauze. Or taking a bubble bath in the company of a human lap dog. Not for him, any of this crap. Not for him.  
  
This has been his adamant conviction - and yet, here he is. Breaking his own word. Lounging about, neck-deep in creamy foam, the heady tang of incense smoke getting into his beard. Like nobles do... Though no; not quite like that.  
  
It feels different from those nights in Orlais - because he is with her now. With his lady Adaar. Who has never been part of the world that he left behind him; who was only allowed to take a sneak peek at it from afar, through a glowing gap in the doorway she was positioned to guard, an immensely tall, gruff, square-jawed mercenary, who was raised among humans and had had it drilled into her head, since the first days she could understand their speech, that the world of pretty gowns and dancing in marble halls and flitting through a colourful swarm of admirers was not meant for the likes of her. That she was too lowly, too hideous, too unclean to be allowed past the threshold.  
  
Which is... a good thing, on the one hand, because he loathes the thought of a heart as big and warm as hers, a heart that always beats so ardently with a desire to protect and shelter the outcasts, the runaways, the lost and the belittled, a heart so pure and strong, being smeared with the venom of that cursed Game. But on the other hand, the very exclusion from the life of luxury, the very push out of palace hallways into the cold and dark, is based on a lie.  
  
For it definitely is a lie that she is not good enough for any of this. That she does not deserve any of this. Maker's balls, it broke his heart when, on a trip in Val Royeaux to secure contracts with a few of the city merchants to supply the Inquisition, he saw her eyes wander to the frilly feminine dresses on display in the store windows, and then glance down in shame, as she scoffed with deliberate rudeness and pretended that she did not care about looking pretty - for she had been taught that looking pretty was far beyond her reach anyway. And ever since then, he has been doing his utmost to bring that beckoning world of beauty closer to her - because it makes her so happy, when a (slightly intimidated) tailor takes her unfamiliar non-human measurements and makes a many-layered, flowing, puff-sleeved outfit, which fits her imposing figure like second skin; so happy that she even smiles broadly, revealing the gaps between her teeth that add so much charm to her look of radiant happiness (and that she, too, was made to feel ashamed of), while her callused hands travel all over her new dress, square fingers tentatively stroking the once forbidden fabric.  
  
And it makes her just as happy to pamper herself with a little bit of relaxation after a long day of cleaving heads off the shoulders of mad mages and half-bestial, red-addled templars, and stopping dragons from terrorizing defenseless little villages, and racing out of burning buildings with tiny orphans clinging onto her like kittens to a mama puma. To heat up a bath, and fill it with bubbles, and nestle in with her lover.  
  
With him.  
  
And making her happy - well, it makes it all completely unlike the return to old temptations that he pictured. For her, this is not decadence, not vice - this is a fairy tale from her childhood come true. A prize that she has rightly earned.  
  
And this time, she is the one that carries him to bed, her ash-coloured skin coarse under his fingertips; a tapestry of scars old and new that tell him countless stories when he traces and kisses them. Of that Envy demon, flickering between a warped black shadow of her own self and its own fleshy, spindle-legged form, lashing out in helpless rage after it failed to corrupt her mind; of a Grey Warden mage, with vacant eyes filled with a blood-red light, and shaking, flame-gloved fingers inches away from digging into her face; of a javelin-like giant icicle that broke off the ledge on a quarry wall in Sarhnia and almost shattered her ribcage after she pushed the freshly freed, disoriented captives out of the way.  
  
These memories, together with the sight of her unique, battle-chiselled beauty, now softened by the touch of bubble water and candle smoke (and Andraste, look how it has made her glow!) awakens the old growl again. But he prolongs the time before release, letting her play with him as much as she pleases, straddling him with her thick, muscular thighs, where the deep grey intermingles with the white streaks of scarring, with droplets of perfumed bath water rolling off her breasts onto his heaving chest, their fragrance made more intoxicating by their mounting body heat.  
  
She wears no mask, and he can see her eyes - see them with perfect clarity, even when he closes his own, no longer able to linger on his journey to pleasure's peak.  
  
They are pale-grey, almost white... Like the sole beam of sunshine that crept in through the bars of his cell, just before she came to get him out.


End file.
